Metamorphosis
by meaninglessmonotony
Summary: Follows Subject Zero's induction into Shepard's crew and documents her changes. Please Review! T for language. Femshep.
1. Chapter 1

Red light, cool black metal, piping bent into twisted arcane shapes that took monstrous form in the ever-present shadows. Jack grinned, kicking against one of the thick bars. Dark. Creepy. She liked it.

She flopped down on the little cot, testing it. Hard. Scratchy. Still a luxury compared to cryo. The red light bathed her, dying her skin as surely as her ink. Red had always been her favorite color.

She laughed, remembering the warmth of scarlet blood washing over her. So pretty when it was fresh and gleaming—black in the moonlight, steaming in the snow. She'd spilled turian blue, salarian green, asari indigo, but she always preferred the red blood of humans.

Aliens hadn't tortured her as a girl—she didn't go out of her way to kill those who hadn't wronged her. It was Cerberus. Those goddamn supremacist terrorists.

She sat up in her cot, eyes narrowed, mind calculating. This Shepard wore a Cerberus uniform, had a Cerberus crew, and flew a Cerberus ship. Looks like a dog, smells like a dog…but doesn't bark like one. Shepard had said she'd only keep the logo until the Collectors were charcoal and she'd made a point of embracing the recruited aliens into the ship's social atmosphere.

Jack shook her head briskly. No, you can't trust anyone.

She lay back, thinking about the layout of the ship. If she needed to—if she wanted to—she could always stage a one-woman coup. The thought comforted her. It was nice to have something you could count on, if only it was your ability to make the floors run slick with blood.

Subject Zero drifted off to a dreamless sleep in her dark new home, the red light reflecting dully on her eyelids.


	2. Chapter 2

"Die, bitch!" Her yell ripped roughly from her throat and she grinned, feeling power course through her veins. The husk flew through the air, moaning as her biotics ripped it apart.

She laughed and fired her shotgun into another. Horizon was a ghost-town, what few remaining colonists there were had been frozen like grotesque mannequins. She wondered briefly if they'd shatter if someone shot them.

"Jack! Let's go!" Shepard yelled, popping a heat sink from the chamber of her smoking sniper rifle. Her face was flushed with adrenaline and her eyes were bright. Jack grinned. The Commander loved this stuff—she tried to hide it, but killing came naturally to her. She had an efficient grace that Jack admired and a deadly ability to read an opponent.

Jack could respect that.

"Coming, Shepard." She paused by the body of a Collector drone that was twitching erratically. Death throes. She languidly drew her heavy pistol and shot the pathetic thing in the head.

She looked up and met the Commander's vivid hazel eyes. The other woman nodded once, then took point and led the little team further into the settlement.

Huh.


	3. Chapter 3

"So, what do you want those files for?" Shepard had just handed her the datapad like it was nothing. Jack grabbed it like it was made of solid gold.

She looked at it with bated breath, eyes wide. "Names, dates, places." She touched it tentatively, fingers itching to trigger the datafeed.

"I'm gonna find everyone who's ever wronged me. And their families. Friends. And I'm going to kill them all." She sat back, closing her eyes in anticipation, "The galaxy's going to be a whole lot emptier when I'm done."

Shepard folded her arms, "Jack, you can't just go off on a killing spree. Their deaths won't get your childhood back."

A week ago, Jack would have been offended. Instead, a smile curved her thick dark lips. "It'll make me feel better."

The Commander shook her head, shaggy brown hair flying out slightly. "It won't."

"Yeah?" One eye popped open skeptically, "How would you know?"

Shepard laughed and sat up on one of the thick pipes near the stairs.

"Story-time, Jack? Okay, then. About ten years ago, I was given my first command position. I had a whole unit under me—mostly rookies, fresh out of the Academy."

The woman's face lost its happy softness and Jack saw a pained shadow darken the hazel eyes. She leaned forward warily, inexplicably drawn to the sudden bared emotion.

"We were sent to a desert planet, Akuze, to secure a mining station and build a settlement for a budding colony. When we got there, the colony was…slaughtered. We figured it was a group of pirates or some kind of large predator, so we set up in a nearby valley. Turns out we were right on top of a thresher nest." Shepard looked down at her hands.

Jack saw it in her mind's eye. She'd seen a maw before, when she was free and travelling. The stupid cult she'd been running with had worshipped the creatures. They'd found one, Treskin (the 'high priest of the Great Wyrm') had prostrated himself before it. It tore him in half. Ugly fuckers.

Shepard sighed, "My whole unit was wiped out. We killed three of them. A few years ago, I found out we'd been purposefully pitted against them."

"Shit! The Alliance?" Jack clenched her fists, tattoos stark against white knuckles.

"No," the Commander eyed her frankly, "Cerberus."

"Assholes! Why the hell are you working with 'em?" Jack leapt up angrily.

Shepard smiled wryly. "Different assholes. Anyway, I found a research base, killed a bunch of mercs, and found an old teammate. His name was Toombs and somehow he'd survived Akuze. The Cerberus scientists had recovered him and experimented on him. He got loose and started killing. He was about to execute an unarmed scientist when I found him."

"What'd you do?" Jack was curious.

"I talked him out of it, arrested those Cerberus bastards, and got Toombs into therapy."

"Why? That shit deserved to die," Jack spat, "They all do."

"Maybe," Shepard nodded, "but we all have to die. If I'd let Toombs shoot that guy, _he_ would've paid for it. The scientist and his cronies are paying for their crimes and my friend is healing. Blood isn't always the solution." She flashed a quick smile to the small biotic. "Talk to you later, Jack."

"Yeah, see ya, Shepard," Jack's enthusiasm had ebbed when she glanced down at the datapad, glowing a soft orange in her red home, "Thanks."


	4. Chapter 4

One thing she was never short of was time.

Sure she was taken out on the missions fairly often, but they were brief — too brief. Small periods of athletic joy, of that incomparable adrenaline rush that left new bloodstains on her loose pants and a pleasurable lazy ache of biotic exhaustion — bandits, pirates, gangs, Collectors… none of it mattered. More fodder for her shotgun.

The loot was nice, too. Shepard had a deal with everyone who went planet-side — one-fourth of the takings for every successful mission. Jack's retirement fund was looking pretty damn good.

Jack grinned, imagining what her newfound wealth could provide her. Guns, knives, more tattoos… shit, she could afford the highest-quality narcotics if she wanted to.

But drugs were a waste.

Sure, they were fun before she got snatched—it was just another ride, just another trip—but the time she'd spent in cryo made her realize that they also made you weak. Dependent if you got stupid, yes, but more. Hallucinogens stole your mind, depressants and stims stole your focus. No, better to be clean.

She thought a lot about this kinda shit these days. She had time—she wasn't running from the law, from anyone now—and she had plenty of things to do with it.

Ever since Shepard had talked about Akuze, though, Jack had spent less time thinking about head-hunting. She hadn't so much as touched the datapad in a couple days.

She hadn't gotten soft—fuck no, she was still a powerful, angry bitch and she liked it that way—but if she was gonna get revenge, she'd be smart about it. Going after lackeys would be useless. If she wanted Shepard's help (she was surprised to realize that she did want it), she'd never have a chance to eliminate everyone connected with that death camp…

Still, it was hard to let go.

Jack looked over to the small table (Well, more of a flat sheet of scrap metal shoved between two pipes, but it made a damn serviceable table to her) in the corner on which that innocuous datapad sat. Her fingers twitched.

She'd browsed it at first; a squirmy sickness in her gut had made her set it aside. After Shepard's speech, her righteous crusade concept hadn't seemed so righteous.

Compromise. Those bastards who were responsible still had to pay — but maybe not in blood. At least, not all of them. Jack didn't have a problem bookmarking the odd key figure.

She growled decisively and grabbed it up, fingers flying over familiar data.

Stop.

Tetlin.

She knew that name.

She knew that goddamn fucking name.

The duragel screen hummed gently, its orange glow seeming to intensify, burning the pale letters into Subject Zero's retinas.

The facility.

Her throat closed on the half-forgotten screams of a child and a bloom of biotic blue flame erupted around her form.

Tetlin.

Pain, everywhere pain and blood and masked men. The table was tall and she crawled beneath it, holding on to the sturdy legs when they came to get her.

Tetlin.

Blood ran freely down her arms in the arena, she spat a tooth onto the pitted and scarred floor. Her heart beat fast—too fast, too fast! The Watchers were nodding approvingly, making small notes on clipboards. One detached from the rest, activating a door. Another child stepped onto the arena, eyes wild, stepped over the body of his predecessor.

Tetlin.

There was a sharp pain in her hand, tearing her focus from the past. She looked down, easing her grip on the datapad. She pulled her power into her core, funneling the biotics back within her.

Planet: Pragia. System: Dakka.

Bastards.

Jack started pacing.

"Shepard. SHEPARD!" She started yelling.

There was a thump and a soft cry from the deck above—she'd scared those little engineers.

She didn't give a shit.

"SHEPARD!"

Tetlin.


End file.
